General election campaign begins

Official polls give PSOE a huge lead, but private surveys forecast significant increase for PP and Vox

The campaign for the November 10 general election starts at midnight on Friday, Nov 1

THE OFFICIAL campaign for the fourth general election in as many years in Spain will begin at midnight tonight (Thursday).

The election campaign officially begins at 00.00 on November 1 and will carry on until midnight on Friday November 8 - allowing for the traditional consideration day on Saturday before the general election takes place on Sunday 10.

The Catalan crisis, the exhumation of Franco, Brexit, the economic slowdown and the inability of left-wing parties to form a coalition in September - thus leading to this new election - will be the focal points of the campaign.

The latest official poll survey results released by government institute INE give the PSOE 32.2% of voters' support that could give caretaker PM Pedro Sánchez's party up to 150 seats in Parliament - but still short of the required 176 majority.

According to the same report the right-wing PP would recover slightly an achieve 18.1% of support (up to 81 MPs), followed by far-left Unidas Podemos with 14.6%. This would give Pablo Iglesias' party up to 45 MPs and would again place them in prime spot for a left wing coalition that could not be agreed to in September).

Liberal Ciudadanos would drop considerably and only achieve 10.6%of the votes with a maximum of 35 MPs.

Meanwhile far-rightwingers Vox only get 7.9% meaning a maximum of 21 MPs.

Contradicting surveys

Experts continue to cast serious doubts on the CIS report as it is controversially handles by Socialist José Félix Tezanos, who has been accuse of 'doctoring the numbers'.

A look at independent surveys carried out by several media groups actually forecast as significant rise for the PP and Vox (mainly due to the Catalan issue). The right wing parties could achieve 21.6% and 12.1% of the votes respectively.

The right-wing block would thus be narrowing the gap on the PSOE and Unidas Podemos again leaving the outcome in the hands of nationalist parties and liberal Ciudadanos.

However, the party led by Albert Rivera also plummets according to indepedent surveys - who even forecast it will be overtaken by Vox.

New left-wing party Más Pais - an excision from Podemos led by Iñigo Erejón could also hold the key to government with a forecast support on 4.1%.

However, poll surveys in recent years have been far from reliable on the day so this short 10-day campaign is expected to be vital for party leaders to gain voters confidence on November 10.